The wealth repartition law in an altruistic society

Richard Trigaux

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2005, vol. 348, issue C, 453-464

Abstract: Econophysics and economy simulations claim to have demonstrated that the repartition of wealth in every economic system always occur in a very inegalitarian mathematical law, called the Pareto law. As this inegalitarian repartition is a cause of many problems in the world, it would be interesting to find a remedy. We can note that the econophysic studies always start from the hypothesis as what economy systems are formed only of agents perfectly egocentric, each seeking only to gather the maximum of wealth for himself. Should the Pareto law come only of this limiting hypothesis? And if agents had other types of behaviours, for instance altruistic? This study is based on a simple simulation where we can program various rates of altruism and egocentrism. Really we can check that a much more egalitarian repartition appears, even with a relatively low rate of altruism (15%). More so, this egalitarian repartition occurs according to a completely different law from that of Pareto: a Gauss law, a bell curve.

Keywords: Econophysics; Inequalities; Pareto altruism; Collaboration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:348:y:2005:i:c:p:453-464

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2004.09.028

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